Loomis
by Lex Munro
Summary: Prequel to Pyrotechnics for the Soul. The Savant started life as a skinny reject; then he became a badass and joined the military. Warnings for mild language, soft sci-fi, military geekery, pop culture references, and brief violence.
1. Like Paper Planes and Playground Games

prequel piece to the **Pyrotechnics for the Soul** series (One Spark, et al).

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. some OCs. minor character deaths. military geekery. movie geekery. bromance-with-a-chick. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).

**pairing:** the beginning of Wade/Nessa.

**timeline:** starts in the mid 2470s. in the 24th century, the United States experienced complete socio-economic collapse in the wake of World War VI. its territories, along with Canada, Mexico, and Cuba, reformed into the United Federation. then, in the year 2468, following heavy fighting in Eurasia and the Middle East, Federation scientists stumbled upon the key to lossless gravitic power, spurring a technological revolution that allowed the Federation to once again become the dominant political superpower on the planet.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) title comes from Ellie Goulding's "Starry-Eyed": "So we burst / Into colors, colors and carousels / Fall head-first / Like paper planes and playground games." 2) i have no idea what laserball is, but i blame Luc Besson for it. 3) Mike Wilson is nobody. Wade just needed a stepdad. and i was honestly kind of shocked to find out that Savant!Wade's dad was Clint Barton. i was all "so who's your dad?" and he was all "Hawkeye," and i was like "nowai!" and he was like "YUSWAI." yes, i totally have complete conversations with the muses dancing in my brain... 4) Loomis is one of many little towns glommed onto the Sacramento Metripolitan Area. Arden is a bigger town in the SMA, and (Rancho) Cordova is another bigger town in the SMA. 5) Anaheim is MUCH bigger than Loomis, and is part of the LA Metripolitan Area. it's also the home of Disneyland. 6) "NorCal" = "Northern California." 7) Zombieland Rule 29: The Buddy System. Zombieland Rule 8: Get a Kick Ass Partner. 8) "caf" = "cafeteria." 9) "holo" is kind of a universal abbreviation for "holographic viewer (TV)," "holovid (holographic video)," and "holocube (cubes for storing holovids)." 10) Zombieland Rule 17: Don't Be a Hero. Zombieland Rule 3: Beware of Bathrooms. 11) in Zombieland, the characters are all referred to by their hometowns. in our case, Inez is from El Paso and Tasky is from Omaha. 12) Sam Fischer is the protagonist of the Splinter Cell games. 13) i don't know when, how, or why Tasky dated Elektra in this universe, but he did.

military glossary:  
>"LT" = "ell-tee" = lieutenant.<br>"MRE" = "meals ready to eat," non-perishable military field rations.  
>"rack" = "bunkcot."  
>"Q""Q-Course" = Army Special Forces Qualification Course; the minimum age requirement is twenty years old.  
>"SF" = "Special Forces."<br>"vet" = "veteran."  
>"HD" = "honorable discharge," retirement from the military with good standing, required for most veteran's benefits (such as health care, disability, pension, etc.).<br>"re-up" = "re-enlist," renew a contract for military service.  
>"PMC" = "private military contractor," mercenary groups.<p>

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>Like Paper Planes and Playground Games<strong>

At age fifteen, life for Wade Wilson is a series of unfair many-on-one fights. He's skinny—fucking beanpole skinny—and he hates the way his body obstinately refuses to put on the kind of muscle he sees on the laserball creeps who keep trying to rearrange his face. He hates it because he punches like a damn girl. He hates it because said creeps can twist both his damn arms up behind his back with one hand. He hates it most of all because his stepdad swears up and down that his biological dad was a certifiable badass prior to being late for his thirty-fifth birthday.

"No, really," Mike says over and over again. "Me 'n your dad and the rest of the squad, alone out there in the sandbox for weeks on end doing coverts…your dad saw us outta so many scrapes, in all kinds of odds…"

So on top of resenting his stupid deceased father for being deceased, Wade also hates the guy for being a badass and not passing it along. And even if his stepdad is kind of a lamer and has no good advice about the phenomenon of bullying (besides 'pick your battles' and 'learn to run faster'), at least Wade's not stuck with the last name Barton. Because while Wade Wilson gets beat up a lot and occasionally shoved into nearby spillways and levees, Wade Barton would've gotten stuffed into every locker in school _and then_ shoved into a spillway.

As a result, Wade is the kind of kid who wears ripped-up jeans and sits in the back of the classroom drawing people being stabbed, but at least he hasn't entertained any ideas of taking one of Mike's guns to school and ventilating half the student body. He figures having hormones sucks for everybody, so he might as well wait and see if his abusers grow out of it before he blows their brains out. It's only polite.

The contributing problem, he's decided, is the size of Loomis, California (or lack thereof). In a bigger place, there'd be more kids. If they moved to Arden or Cordova, he'd be in a big enough school that there'd be a whole damn clique of skinny angry boys who listened to loud music because it was a cheaper overall investment than drugs, and at least his misery would have company.

Wade spends considerable chunks of his days fantasizing about getting outta Loomis. Getting on a plane to Seoul or Singapore, where nobody'd know him or care that he's not on a sports team. Living in a little loft somewhere on the Bay, or a swanky condo in Santa Monica. Places where being the bottom five percent of the pecking order makes less of a difference because five percent is still _a hell of a lot of people_.

Today, they've got a new girl. Petite and pretty. Blue-black hair and milk-white skin with a spot over one eye like a Dalmatian. Like Wade, she dresses way last-century, but with neon tights under her ripped-up jeans and pink hand-me-down Converse instead of black. She introduces herself to the class as Neena Thurman from Anaheim.

Neena sits next to Wade and smiles at him.

The kid on the other side of her sneers and says, "Hey, _mutie_."

"Hey," is all Neena says, and smiles at the other guy, too. Figures a chick from a bigger city would be used to a little mutie-roughing, and Simon probably wouldn't bother except she's new.

Mutant or human, new kids are toe-jam to the established cliques.

"So why'd you move out here to the ass-crack of NorCal?" Wade asks her.

"My foss retired, and he said he had some old friends here."

"Foss?"

"Foster dad. My parents died in that big derailment ten years back. He's one of those confirmed old bachelors, but he's a pretty good dad."

Ah. Regs say that foster parents for mutants have to either be mutants themselves or take a lot of mutant physiology and social sensitivity classes, so Wade assumes Neena's foss is a mutie and files that away for 'nosy questions to ask after becoming better acquainted.'

"Bummer," he commiserates. "My dad kicked off in the war, and my mom died of cancer four years ago, so it's just me and my step. But he's not, like, an _evil_ stepdad or anything. I'm pretty sure he's not raising a legion of the undead in the basement."

Neena raises her eyebrows. "Pretty sure? A legion of the undead's a big deal, y'know. You wanna be _completely_ sure. Maybe go down with a shotgun and some holy water."

Wade tries to be completely nonchalant when he shrugs and says, "Maybe you should come over sometime and we'll do that. Rule twenty-nine, and all."

"I was thinking I qualify for rule eight, actually."

Getting the reference has scored Neena some big points in Wade's book. "We'll see. You're kinda short to be my Tallahassee, but I'll give you a chance to earn your Twinkies."

Neena scores more points when she lets Wade ramble at top-speed all through lunch, nodding agreeably here and there. "You're like a bunny on crack," she says when he pauses to finish his milk. "You know, like the little brown one in that one ancient Bugs Bunny cartoon. It always talked in fast-forward."

After school, Wade's usual band of bullies fails to waylay him in the hallway. The only bullying fodder more appealing than a scarecrow-shaped outcast is a new kid, so Wade goes looking for poor Neena.

He heads to the laserball team's favorite beating grounds, a nook between the caf and the mass waste receptacle (tech revolution or not, they should really just keep calling the damn things dumpsters).

When he gets there, it's just in time to see Neena punch the last of the five big guys in the kidney hard enough to make him fall down with a groan.

Neena dusts off her hands. "What kinda dumbass jumps a mutie without knowing what her powers are?" she scoffs.

"Your power is ass-kickery?" Wade asks.

"No, I'm just really lucky. Like…I always dodge the right direction, I always hit what I aim at, stuff like that. But I had to be taught how to fight, just like anybody else. I could show you a few tricks if ya want."

"Dude. You are so officially my Tallahassee."

"Anaheim, man. I'd gouge my eyes out before I'd live in Florida. Florida's for _old people_."

They walk home together, because Wade's house is on her way. She waves goodbye from the sidewalk, and it's kind of cool and kind of trippy at the same time, because nobody's smiled and waved at Wade for years.

It's probably not lame that he goes to his room and listens to rock instead of metal for the first time in eight months. Tragic-angry-skinny guys are allowed to be cheerful sometimes. It's not like he wears eyeliner and cuts himself (he's pretty sure emo guys aren't allowed to be happy).

Neena's waiting on the sidewalk when he heads out the next morning. "How's it hoppin', crack-bunny?" she says by way of greeting. And they walk to school together.

After school on Friday, she comes up to the door with him.

"How was school?" Mike calls (somewhat mechanically) from his place on the couch, watching some lame sport on the holo.

"Made a new friend," Wade says.

Mike's eyes are big and round when he looks over the couch in disbelief.

Neena waves. "I'm Neena, codename Anaheim. I'm here to help clear out any potential undead infestations in the basement, as per rules eight, seventeen, and twenty-nine, as well as rule three, sub-clause B."

"Three…that's bathrooms." Wade's actually a little proud Mike remembers that. "But what's sub-clause B?"

"And other vulnerable areas such as bottlenecks and basements."

Mike turns back around. "Well, you kids have fun, then. Just don't set anything on fire, and try not to shoot anything that's not a zombie."

Neena stops by on Saturday with a holocube of Shaun of the Dead. Mike's so happy to see Wade with an actual friend that he invites Neena to stay for supper. She declines, but he brings them a plate of fresh baklava halfway through the movie.

By the middle of the next week, Neena's no longer being bothered by bullies of any clique, and Wade's safe as long as she's around.

"You're lucky, Anaheim," he tells her as they're walking home on Wednesday.

"No way, your stepdad is awesome. You wouldn't wanna meet my foster dad, he's way strict. Dyed-in-the-wool strict. Eats strict for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't think he's ever even _heard_ of a holovid. He probably remembers when they still used DVDs. Hell, he probably remembers when dinosaurs roamed the earth."

Wade draws elaborate loops with his hand. "Yeah, but…you're a mutant. You got super-powers. Mike keeps telling me my dad was a badass, but I'm just a fucking pansy string bean who gets beat up when there aren't any chicks around to defend me."

Neena snorts. "Dude, you're not even sixteen yet. You've got a lot of growing left. Look, if it really bothers you, ask your step to pay for some karate lessons or something."

Smile. Wave. Seeya tomorrow.

Wade's nervous and a little embarrassed when he shuffles up to the couch and mumbles, "."

Mike pauses his show (golf, whatthefuck) and waves Wade around.

Wade perches on the edge of a couch cushion and tries not to fidget.

"Well, that's more like it," Mike says encouragingly. "Proactive. Lessons are kinda expensive these days…but one of the old squad retired recently, so I'll call him up and see if he can't show you a thing or two."

On Thursday, there's a strange car in the driveway, and Neena stops and gapes at it.

"What's the foss doing at your place?"

Wade doesn't know. Maybe the foss has decided he doesn't like his little badass mutie princess hanging out with boys. Or humans. Or both, which would suck, since Wade's both. Double-whammy. Two strikes. Maybe the guy's come to say they can't be friends.

In the living room, Mike's sitting in an armchair for once, leaving the couch for his guest—a guy who looks like a cross between a badger and a heavyweight wrestler. Something about Mr. Badger's face screams 'I have no sense of humor.' Yeah, definitely eats strict for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Wade stands a little straighter and wishes he'd worn a clean shirt today (in fact, his shirt has a mustard stain near the bottom). That's the kind of atmosphere generated by Neena's foss.

Mike gestures. "Wade, this is James Logan. He served in Serbia with me and your dad."

"Neena," says Mr. Logan. "You didn't tell me your friend at school was Clint Barton's kid."

Neena looks completely lost. "Who-what's kid? His last name's Wilson."

Wade nudges her. "Dude. _Stepdad_, remember?"

Mr. Logan stares sternly at Wade for a moment. Then he says, "Kid, I'm gonna teach you how to not get yer ass kicked so bad or so often. I'm gonna teach ya how to kick other kids' asses instead, and I'm gonna _try_ and teach ya how not to kill any of the stupid little brats."

And they start that day. No Mr. Miyagi, wax-on-wax-off bullshit, either—straight-up Special Forces stuff.

Over the next few weeks, Wade learns which parts of his body to hit with. He learns which parts of his opponents to aim for and how much strength to exert (Mr. Logan is good for that, because his mutation makes him heal super-fast). He doesn't learn anything formal, doesn't learn any one style. It's Judo throws and Aikido holds, Muay Thai elbows and Wing Chun punches and Kung Fu kicks. Punch _this hard_ and the guy will choke. A little harder, he'll pass out. A lot harder, and he'll fall down dead.

Neena practices with them sometimes. She's not as strong, but she's fast, and she never misses.

When they turn sixteen, Mr. Logan decides they need to learn firearms so they can join the military (Neena wants to, won't shut up about it, and Wade figures he might as well, since he doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life except get the hell outta Loomis).

They find out that Wade is a better shot than Neena, which is pretty effing epic.

"Definitely Clint's son," Logan says, staring at a paper target with a single hole right on the bullseye.

Wade doesn't know how to feel about that, because his memories of his dad are pretty spotty, and he doesn't like the idea that people will always be holding up some kind of imaginary yardstick to see if he measures up. So he just follows Neena's lead.

She starts practicing with things like knives and nunchucks. By default, so does Wade.

She learns to ride a motorcycle, learns to hotwire cars, learns to fly a plane. So does Wade.

She takes up free-running. So does Wade.

By seventeen, Wade's hit six-three and bulked up to one-seventy. Somehow, he's sitting pretty on a four-point-oh. He figures it's because everybody else is too stupid to remember that the answers to every test come straight from the textbooks. Maybe laserball really does cause as many brain-damaging head injuries as football used to.

The jocks don't give him shit anymore, because he kicks their asses at sports in PE (they've been begging him to join a team or three). The mutie equivalent of the popular crowd doesn't give him shit, either, since he busted Julio's kneecap and gave Alex a pressing need for nine stitches over one eye.

Suddenly, Wade's getting a flood of syrupy letters from places like West Point and the United Federation Maritime School and San Angeles Aerospace Academy. They use phrases like 'place of honor' and 'rare opportunity.' The Army recruiter just says, "Son, how'd you like to get paid to kick some ass?"

"Will they let me use explosives?"

"Long as you throw 'em toward the enemy."

"Deal."

The second they turn eighteen, they're on the bus. Wade spends most of Basic with a pair of Drill Sergeants screaming in his ears, because he cheerfully informed them on day one that Basic was a waste of time and he'd like to go blow people up now, thanks. Then he and Neena get separated, which is total bullshit. Equality of genders and genes, _yeah right_.

They keep in touch, though. Weekly letters about 'this one idiot LT' and 'that vid that came out on Tuesday' and 'what exactly do you think is in a turkey roast MRE.'

Wade gains a reputation as the unit's chatterbox, the guy who can talk about zombie movies for three days straight and shoots like he's expecting to be the world's last defense against a zombie invasion. He's glad his LT's not an ass like Neena's is, because the guy just kinda rolls his eyes and lets Wade do his thing, as long as his locker's clean, he showers regularly, and his rack's in order.

One day, the guy even takes Wade aside after practice at the range and talks very seriously about Special Forces.

"You got a real gift, Wilson," he sighs. "If you could just learn to keep your mouth shut, you could take the Q-course and go out and do all that exciting shit you keep yapping about. See the world, blow shit up, go all Sam Fischer on the nation's enemies…"

The idea that somebody has that kind of faith in him is flattering, and very cool. "For reals? You think I could be SF?"

"Like I said, learn to shut up when you gotta, and it'll be a cakewalk. You shoot and fight like you were raised by some paramilitary psycho."

"Retired military," Wade corrects. "And the guy who taught me that stuff wasn't the guy who raised me—he's my BFF's foster father, apparently retired from the same squad as my dad and my stepdad, and I'm not sure he's technically a psycho, just really strict and kind of grumpy and overall somewhat—"

"Wilson," barks the lieutenant.

Wade whips to attention and snaps his mouth shut apologetically.

"Look, when you hit the age requirement, I'll get all the paperwork laid out for you. But you gotta keep performing on the range and out on exercises, and if we get deployed, you gotta deliver. And for God's sake, put a zip on that lip."

Excitability notwithstanding, Wade cracks down on all his little problem areas. Keeps his boots clean, stops staying up after lights out, practices not saying all the smartass things that pop into his head.

He and Neena meet back up for Special Forces qualification. She cackles at him and hugs him off his feet.

"Lookit you! You're almost as buff 'n manly as me now!"

"You only wish you had my girlish figure," he retorts primly.

She gives him a playful punch in the shoulder. "We're gonna ace this shit, you 'n me. We're gonna show 'em these Padawan learners are ready to be Jedi."

They blow Q out of the water.

It takes a formal request from each of them, a letter from Mr. Logan, and a lot of bootlicking, but they end up in the same covert squad.

They start with seven: Wade, Neena, Temple, Forbes, Masters, Montgomery, and Prewett. Prewett is a complete tool, and they shun him pretty hard until he transfers out. Forbes gets air conditioning in his frontal lobe on their first mission. Montgomery loses his left arm to a frag and gets shipped home with a purple heart. And then it's just the four of them.

For four years after that, they're practically fucking invincible. Assassinating politicians, rescuing political prisoners, stealing biological weapons…whatever odd jobs the United Federation has that need a little stealth and a lot of enthusiasm. People look at them kinda funny when they introduce themselves as 'Loomis, Anaheim, El Paso, and Omaha,' but getting the job done excuses eccentric callsigns in the military.

"You hear they're cuttin' our pay again?" Temple says into the depths of a can of Spam (which she claims tastes like ground coyote).

"Fucking bullshit," mutters Masters, around a mouthful of Snickers.

The blonde nods. "Vet benefits, too. HD'll get you vet life and medical, which is worse 'n the national average, and five percent less 'n minimum wage every year."

"We've gotta get outta this gig before we end up working for free. I hear private sector's paying twice what we get, with better equipment and more vacation time."

Wade doesn't say anything, but the idea takes root in his brain, and he can see it doing the same in Neena's.

Their contract expires at the end of the year. They don't re-up. All four of them go home with more medals than most people get serving twice the time.

While Mike doesn't like the idea that Wade's abandoning his patriotic duty, he's easily sidetracked when Wade gives him a nice little shadowbox of Wade's patches. The shadowbox gets added to the line over the mantel, three frames side-by-side now with Special Forces at the top, Airborne under that, and unit patches at the bottom. Mike beams with pride when he looks at the frames, so Wade figures he's mostly off the hook.

Wade takes a week-long break to get used to real food and comfortable clothes again.

Masters used to date this chick who used to work for a pretty swanky PMC and helped start up a small outfit of her own, and he introduces them all.

"Elektra, this is Wade, Neena, and Inez."

It throws Wade a little off-balance. He's just spent seven years being 'Wilson' or 'Loomis' (sometimes 'crack-bunny,' but only with Neena). And _nobody_ calls Temple by her first name unless they want their face rearranged by a mutie who can punch a hole through a brick wall (some kind of childhood trauma, Wade figures).

"Temple," the blonde corrects with a wince.

Masters ignores her. "Guys, Elektra Natchios."

"Does she come with queso?" Wade quips.

Masters' ex-girlfriend gives him a deadpan look. "Come with me. Vanessa and I'll check you out, make sure you're up to the job, then we'll clear it with Hayden and get the paperwork moving."

It turns out that Vanessa is built a lot like a Barbie doll. She's also blue. "I'm Vanessa, I'll be testing your physical capabilities while Elektra goes over your credentials."

Wade wolf-whistles at her. "Damn, lookin' good, Smurfette!"

She punches him.

"I deserved that," he admits, pinching his nose to keep from bleeding all over the floor.

It's the start of a beautiful relationship.

**.End.**


	2. Priscilla

first impressions, and all that jazz.

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. movie geekery. military geekery. brief mercenary violence. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***, f***, and g**damn).

**pairing:** light background Nessa/Wade.

**timeline:** probably sometime in the 2490s.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) Tikrit is an Iraqi city on the Tigris, some hundred or so north-by-northwest of Baghdad. 2) Zombieland Rule 2: The Double-Tap. 3) i blame Men in Black for the "weird-shit-o-meter." 4) "the other one's got bells on" is an expression related to "pull the other one," which is itself related to the expression "you're pulling my leg," which means "you're kidding me." 5) every snake i've ever eaten was delicious. the texture and taste are a lot like chicken. 6) Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot are the first six letters of the NATO phonetic alphabet. 7) you don't actually need to understand a word of what Nate says about time travel. 8) Charon is the ferryman who takes the dead down the River Styx. 9) ethylphenyl is an organic chemistry component, part of the molecular composition of certain cancer drugs. in isolation, ethylphenyl would have six hydrogen and eight carbon atoms in it, but it's still considered ethylphenyl if some of the hydrogen atoms are replaced with other components (like an amine). that is the extent of what i remember from the organic chem chapters of my chemistry courses. 10) salutatorian is the second-highest rank in a graduating class (under valedictorian). 11) one of the simplest thermite compounds is rust and aluminum (plus a heat source sufficient to ignite it).

**military glossary:**  
>"ghillie" = netting or fabric with things like rags, weeds, or foliage attached to break up a silhouette for the purpose of camouflage, because straight lines draw the eye. a sniper in a good ghillie suit can be invisible to anything short of a thermal scan.<br>"cable charge" = "detonating cord" (det cord).  
>"MRE" = "meals ready to eat," non-perishable military rations.<br>"multi-purpose ammo" = ammunition that has an armor piercing core and includes an incendiary stage and an explosive stage; it's designed to penetrate light armor and damage the personnel inside.  
>"two-thirty" = clock-face direction that corresponds to right and slightly ahead.<br>"unsuppressed" = gunfire with no silencing or flash-hiding components.  
>"fire discipline" = the process of either refraining from firing or carefully confirming targets before firing.<br>"fall back" = "withdraw," "move to (a location farther from the engagement)."  
>"nav point" = "navigational point," a pre-determined map coordinate, given a nickname for both convenience and secrecy.<br>"SF" = "Special Forces."  
>"flatline" = "KIA," "dead."<br>"tour" = "deployment period."

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>Priscilla<strong>

Years and years ago, Wade met Nate for the first time twice. That is, Wade met Nate for the first time when Nate was forty-mumble, and then (some four and a half hours later) Nate met Wade for the first time when Nate was twenty-three. Ah, the many delights of time travel.

It happened in the desert near Tikrit.

They were camped in a gully just off an oasis, roofed by a beige ghillie net while they waited for a particular convoy to pass on the road half a mile away. In daylight, when the trucks came driving along, they would blow the cable charge in front, put a hole in the engine block of the tailing vehicle, use the delay to verify their target, apply rule two, run like hell.

Wham, bam, thank you for the clean million, ma'am.

When you're waiting for the next assignment, extra commission work is a beautiful thing.

The girls were asleep, and Omaha (_Masters_, had to call him Masters now because Nessa and 'Lektra and their asshole boss didn't get the damn joke) was perched up in a palm tree like a frigging monkey, watching the south approach.

Wade was belly-down in a dune, watching the north.

In a brief sparkle of blue-white light, a man appeared. Before the light faded, Wade caught a glimpse of a handsome, deeply lined face crowned with white hair. Old-ish, somewhere between forty and sixty, but pulled off nicely (like Patrick Stewart or Sean Connery…or, hmmm, maybe George Clooney), and Wade found himself wishing he'd look that good when he got old.

"Please don't shoot, Wade," the stranger said.

As it happened, Wade had been way past scripted reactions on his Weird-Shit-O-Meter, and had just gaped like a dumbass. Probably for the best, if whoever-the-hell was on a first name basis with him.

"My name is Nathan Summers, and I'm from the future."

Something like hysterical laughter bubbled up in Wade's throat, but he swallowed it down (just in case this was a hallucination and the sound might cause Masters to punch his lights out for scaring the crap out of him). "Y'know, the other one's got bells on it," he said. "I'm thinking of adding little blinking LED lights, the cool ones that change colors so you can keep them up all through—"

"Wade, calm down," the stranger interrupted gently, hands up in a placating gesture.

Wade abruptly realized that the stranger was _frigging huge_. "Wow, you must be, like, seven and a half feet tall, Priscilla." Because really, when a huge handsome guy from the future appears in the middle of the desert with all the subtlety of a pink bus, what else can you call him?

"Pay attention, please. In the second truck, sitting next to your target, is the high-value prisoner you were told to leave alive if at all possible."

"Okay," Wade said, because _of course_ the guy would know the details of their _covert operation_, being from the _future_.

"That high-value prisoner is a younger version of me. You need to change the plan to include retrieving him."

"Because otherwise you die and the machines win the war?" Wade guessed.

"No, this has nothing to do with Skynet or Terminators. Without you, the timesliding projects stall and get shelved. You're the impetus behind the evolution of linear displacement into lateral displacement, an intuitive prodigy of chronogeometry who—"

Wade had tuned out, and Summers seemed to notice.

"Nevermind that. Just save Nathan. He'll offer you a job. Take it."

"If you're really from the future—"

"Sixty-nine, dude."

Holy shit.

And then Nathan-from-the-future pressed a button on his watch, glowed for a moment, and vanished.

Later, in the rosy pink-violet of dawn, they breakfasted on MREs. El P—_Temple_ augmented this by rigging up her smokeless burner and frying a pair of snakes she'd caught the day before. They all grudgingly admitted that they'd rather eat snake than MREs (except Nessa, who said she'd rather starve than ever eat snake).

They geared up, checked and double-checked their weapons. Neena, 'Lektra, and Temple crossed the road and wriggled into the sand to hide; Neena had the multi-purpose ammo, so she would disable the vehicles. Masters peeled off the contact seals for his ignition controller and hooked up to the cable he'd laid the day before. Wade and Nessa got settled on the ridge just above their base camp; Wade would take the killshot.

"Alpha, Charlie, and Foxtrot in position," Wade said over their comms.

_~Bravo, Delta, and Echo in position,~_ Neena replied. _~Radio silence until target confirmation.~_

Nothing to do but wait.

It was full daylight, bright and hot and unforgiving, by the time the convoy showed up.

"Dust cloud on my two-thirty," Nessa said softly. "No wind, low humidity. I make your range at exactly six hundred thirty-six yards to target."

"Masters, ready up," Wade quietly relayed.

Fifty feet distant, Masters gave a thumbs-up.

Four dun-colored Hummers appeared in the heat-haze over the road, cruising along in spacious single file.

Nessa checked through her spotting lens again. "Confirmed target, second vehicle. You're good to go. Fire when ready."

Ambushes, when properly laid and executed, are very quick.

A staccato of muffled booms flinging sand upward, a screech of tires on sandy asphalt, three quick explosions (minor compared to Masters and his det cord, of course, but sharper because they were aboveground), several rattling bursts of unsuppressed fire from Temple and 'Lektra.

The enemy rushed to take cover on what they believed to be their sheltered side.

Wade waited.

A man slid out of the backseat of the target vehicle, dragged a cuffed and hooded man with him.

"Confirmed high-value friendly," Nessa said, into her throat-mic this time. "Black hood, next to target, behind second vehicle. Exercise fire discipline in the area. Prepare to fall back to Bravo and Charlie nav points upon target kill confirmation."

For a moment—just a moment—Wade stared at Nessa while something like disapproval crept its way through him. She didn't give a rat's ass about the prisoner, was totally ready to just leave the guy in enemy hands in the middle of the desert. Maybe it was all that time in SF, but it went against his nature to just leave somebody like that. Dead or alive, you never leave a man behind.

_Fuck it._

He took his shot (and several more to thin the ranks), jumped up, and ran for the convoy.

"Wade, what the fuck?" Nessa yelped.

He ignored her, choosing instead to take out any enemies that were completely concealed from Neena and the girls. All enemy forces were flatline by the time he skidded to a halt at the second truck and cut through the zip-tie holding the prisoner's wrists.

"Thank you," was the first thing out of the guy's mouth as he yanked off the hood.

Wade gaped. "What are you, like, _twelve_?"

"Twenty-three," the kid corrected with a scowl. "As I was saying, thank you for the timely rescue."

"Which wasn't in the job description!" Nessa said irately as she slid down the dune to them. "We were just supposed to off Al-Assar and _go_, let the Goddamn Army clean up the rest."

"I'm glad you didn't—they would almost certainly have killed me in retaliation. I'm Nathan, by the way. Summers."

"I don't care. Out here, bullets is bucks, and I just spent a lot for no extra gain."

Wade glared up at Nessa. Because yeah, okay, she was right, but Nate was just a kid (twenty-three, for Chrissakes, he'd just gotten _started_ with life). Sometimes his girlfriend was a complete bitch.

Nate snorted. "Maybe you'll care that I'm head of Research and Development for AskaniCorp, the United Federation's top defense contractor. I find myself in need of a new security team."

"Since the last one ended up splattered all over the inside of a black SUV?" Masters guessed as he came to join them. "The pictures in the briefing weren't pretty."

"How do you feel about time travel?" Wade asked Nate.

"Well, it's an absolutely fascinating subject and we're currently on the verge of a real breakthrough. Still, it's best to go carefully, especially when we're uncertain about the physiological side-effects, and chrononeurology is still in its infancy as a hybrid science. Linear displacement would of course have to be carefully monitored in order to prevent accidental paradoxes, but some time loops may be unavoidable and could, in fact, occur naturally on a semi-regular basis—but the _real_ trick will be lateral displacement to neighboring universes, a sensible step after interstellar and intergalactic trade, and—"

"I'm in," said Wade.

"In what?" called Temple as she and 'Lektra and Neena finally crossed back over the road.

"Leaving Charon for AskaniCorp."

"How's the pay?" she asked at the same time that Neena asked, "We still get to blow shit up?"

"Competitive and probably," Nate replied.

"Shiny," said Temple. "I'm in."

"Me too," said Neena.

"I'm not," Nessa grunted. "I've been working for Alex for ages now, and I like it. I don't want or need a new boss—especially some big corporation."

"I owe Alex," agreed 'Lektra. "I'm out."

"Out," said Masters. "I like my contract, don't feel like renegotiating."

Neena looked from face to face. "We'll leave you guys with all the long-term supplies and take all the blame for exceeding the mission parameters."

"Good luck with the rest of the tour," Temple added, shaking hands with Masters. "Don't get dead, okay? You still owe me thirty bucks and a drink, Omaha."

And it was that simple. Three of them stayed in the sand, three of them flew Nate home. Hayden bitched them out, screwed them out of their severance—the guys at AskaniCorp were nice enough to pick up the tab. When the others got back stateside, Nessa and Wade went out to lunch somewhere expensive that Wade hated but Nessa loved. The bigwigs decided Nate needed a live-in bodyguard. Wade moved in and saw The Board for the first time.

It was half-covered in formulas, equations, molecules, and scribbled notes. Something about it irritated Wade.

"What's that?"

"It's sort of a hobby," Nate told him. "Cancer research. Chemistry. Genetics. I haven't had anything to add to it for years, though—nobody's been making any headway, and I've been busy."

"Cancer is your hobby?"

"Trying to find a cure," Nate corrected. "My mother died of lung cancer, and she never smoked a day in her life."

Wade considered that. "Waitress," he guessed. "Paying to send you to school?"

Nate made an affirmative noise. "It's ridiculous, you know. Magnet schools charge outrageous tuition and they _still_ couldn't keep up with me. Med school was far more engaging."

"So you're twenty-three and you've been through med-school?"

"I got a Masters in genetics first. But then I went to med-school. I never finished my residency, though—AskaniCorp recruited me right in the middle, and the work was just so fascinating that I couldn't say no. After that, I got my Masters in biochemistry. Molecular geometry started giving me some interesting ideas, so I started another one in molecular engineering, and I think that will lead right into quantum physics, but it's possible that I'd be better served cobbling something together on empirical work as we continue the chronological displacement experiments, and—"

By that point, Wade tuned out and went back to stacking his movie collection alongside whatever boring-ass holocubes Nate had accumulated (probably all educational, him being such a damn super-nerd).

Nate kept talking as they went back downstairs to fetch the next box (because Wade had a system and always unpacked his holos before he moved anything else into a new apartment). He kept talking as he carried the two modest suitcases that held Wade's entire wardrobe (work clothes, five pairs of jeans, a pair of sweats, socks, boxers, and about two-dozen tee-shirts with slogans of varying decorum). He kept talking as Wade unpacked an entire set of matched luggage filled with weapons and started stashing guns around the apartment (between the couch cushions, safety on, taped under the end table, safety off, kitchen drawer, freezer, between Nate's bed and the wall, taped under the lid of the flush tank on the toilet, the shelf in the hall closet, taped under the dining table…).

Then Wade figured out what was bothering him about The Board.

"That should be a five," Wade said, pointing.

Nate stopped talking.

Wade tapped the erroneous subscript. "Ethynylphenyl only has six hydrogen in it when it's all by itself."

Nate stared at the number and turned an interesting shade of pink. Then he wiped the number off with the edge of his sleeve and wrote in a five. "Ah. Yes. Thank you," he said, and coughed. "I must have been tired when I wrote that. So, chemistry. That doesn't strike me as something that a mercenary would find interesting."

"The fine art of blowing shit up? Lots of mercs love chemistry, whether they know it or not. Let me into a cleaning closet, a kitchen, or a high school chem lab, and I could probably find enough stuff to level a building."

"That's…both disturbing and impressive."

Wade shrugged. "I was salutatorian with a four-point-oh in a town of less than ten thousand people. Boredom was a way of life, and Neena mostly filled our boredom with learning how to be a badass secret agent. Kind of…Bourne meets Burn Notice, plus some Call of Duty."

"I don't know what that means," Nate said, puzzled.

"You were really sheltered."

Nate puffed up. "I was being constantly educated."

"It means I can drive or pilot any vehicle smaller than a destroyer, I've never met a gun I couldn't shoot, and I can melt my way into a safe with an empty soda can, five rusty nails, and a flare."

"Good?" hazarded Nate.

"Since I'm keeping you alive, yeah."

"Why exactly did you ask me about time travel when we first met?"

Wade kicked his suitcases into a corner and shrugged. "Because a future version of you had just traveled back in time to tell me to save your ass and take your job offer. Coulda been a hallucination, but my gut feeling was to do what future-you said. But this roommate-slash-live-in-bodyguard thing has a catch—you require some serious pop-culture exposure. We're having weekly movie night."

**.End.**


	3. Movie Night

a snippet i forgot i had.

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. movie geekery. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s*** and f***).

**pairing:** none/gen.

**timeline:** later in the same year as **Priscilla**.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) by 'the biz,' Wade means the world of mercenaries/private military. 2) Zombieland Rule 31: Check the Back Seat. 3) the cab drivers of Moscow are world-(in)famous. 4) you can't have a true cinema experience without horrible popcorn slathered in butter-substitute. a pack of Twizzlers will enhance the experience, but isn't strictly necessary. 5) Snow Crash is an amazing cyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. so far, nobody's made it into a movie (although the premise of Gamer was remarkably similar in places). DEAR HOLLYWOOD, PLZ FIX. 6) Zombieland Rule 3: Beware of Bathrooms. 7) at this point, their world has low-level life extension tech, probably a nanite boost to cellular replication or something. each treatment has to be tailored to the patient (to avoid genetic mutation) and lasts thirty to forty years before needing to be re-calibrated and re-administered. hell, maybe Wade's cancer was the result of a faulty life extension calibration. 8) what Neena says about guy friends is a horrible stereotype. 9) the first two people not to tell Wade to shut up every five minutes were Mike (his stepdad) and Neena. Clint probably didn't, but Wade's memories of his dad are fuzzy, since he was always shipped out. 10) the Twinkies are a reference to Neena being Wade's Tallahassee.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>Movie Night<strong>

Wade expected to hate Nate (or at least get really, really sick of him).

Familiarity breeds contempt, or so the saying goes, so he figured that spending pretty much every waking moment around the kid would drive him nuts.

Nate, however, has several factors in his favor. First, Nate is extremely well-educated in a good way—he can talk at least a little bit about almost any subject. Second, Nate is willing to be educated about his extreme dearth of pop-culture exposure—Wade is allowed to rant and rave about all his favorite shows and movies (of which he has a lot, since TV's been around for six hundred years and movies've been around for another fifty) with only minor complaints or interruptions. And third, Nate seems to be easily impressed by Wade—a nice change from the outright disdain of most people or the blasé acceptance of people in the biz.

There's probably more than that, but those are the important ones, the reasons Wade and Nate and Neena are walking out to the parking lot together.

"No, no, I think you'll like it," Neena says. "Everybody should go to a movie theater at least once, and there's something cozy and relaxing about the old two-dee stuff. Three-dee holo can be a little motion-sickness-inducing. Me, I get migraines if I go see a holo on the big screen."

Wade and Neena move automatically to different sides of her car. She pops the hood and trunk. He checks the undercarriage.

"Takes some people that way," he says as he looks. Then he stands and gives the interior a once-over.

"Why do you always do that?" Nate asks.

"Rule thirty-one," says Neena.

"Because your last set of bodyguards were pasted by a guy who hid in the trunk," says Wade, since he knows Nate has no idea what Neena means (because Nate has so far refused to watch Zombieland).

Nate says nothing, but waits for Neena and Wade to get in the car first.

Wade rides in the back with Nate (because what good's a bodyguard who can't reach to shove your head between your knees before the bullets fly through at head-height?). It's a weird thing, the difference between who you'll let drive you and who you'll let drive the people who are important to you.

Wade doesn't give a shit about cabs, no matter how crazy the drivers are. He's ridden in New Yorkese cabs and Parisian cabs and Muscovite cabs (Russians are the fastest and most dangerous), he's ridden with new drivers and elderly drivers and carjackers (carjackers are the worst, because they're always distracted). He'll let pretty much anybody drive _him_.

But Wade only trusts two people in the world to drive Nate: himself and Neena. Maybe that'll change, if new security gets assigned and they're not morons. Temple's never crashed, but she's kind of a scary driver…if she tones it down a little, Wade will consider letting her drive Nate.

"I don't watch many recreational holos," Nate says awkwardly, while they're cruising down Sunset.

"I guessed," Neena says dryly.

"What kind of etiquette is there? I suppose I shouldn't talk during…"

Wade shrugs. "I do."

"Don't listen to him," says Neena. "He ends up getting stuff thrown at him and having people threaten to beat him up."

And Wade lets Neena watch the other cars, because that's what security driving is. He talks to Nate, because that's what he does, what his life is. He talks, and he listens, and he occasionally shoots somebody who's about to pull a weapon.

"What was that you were studying yesterday, when you were hogging the holo all evening?"

"Quantum physics," Nate tells him. "I'm working on another Masters." Because Nate collects degrees like little old men collect stamps, but he gets distracted long before he can get to doctorate level.

Wade makes a face. "Quantum?"

Nate shrugs asymmetrically, awkward and sheepish. "Well," he says in a special tone that means he's trying to figure out just how far down to talk to someone. "Down at the sub-atomic level, physics gets a little weird. The rules that we know work on a larger level, with atoms and molecules and composite substances…momentum, inertia, gravity, friction…those kinds of things don't work the same way on sub-atomic particles."

"So…why don't you call it 'sub-atomic physics,' then?"

Nate winces. "Uh. Well, you see, a quantum is the smallest amount of something you can have in any sort of interaction. Like…the smallest number of mice it takes to screw in a lightbulb would be a quantum of mice."

"Two, but hell if I know how they got in there," chortles Neena.

They park, they pick up their tickets (pre-ordered), they buy bad movie popcorn with bad fake butter (the best kind to have at a movie).

It's an older movie, practically ancient—from the twenty-fourth century, when the States were collapsing and scientists everywhere were desperately looking for the next big breakthrough—based on a twentieth-century book that Wade saw labeled 'classical cyberpunk literature' on the digital library site. Super-urban post-collapse-economy parallel-world sci-fi with car chases, sword fights, and some pretty fanciful notions of the Internet (fanciful at the time, childishly simplistic these days).

Wade keeps quiet, just because so much of the movie's sound design is so effing perfect.

Nate watches with a serious, slightly perplexed expression on his face. After Hiro Protagonist fades from view and the credits start to roll, Nate frowns over at Wade. "That's really what they thought the future would be like?"

"Sci-fi isn't about the future, or whatever cool shit they thought we'd have," Neena sighs. "The conjectural technology is just a vehicle for examining ethics, society, and human nature."

"Then…" Nate says slowly, considering the movie. "The real subjects are the economic instability surrounding a widening gap of rich and poor, the departure and delinquency of teenage youth, and the danger of complacent blind faith in the establishment? Those were all extremely pertinent during the formation of the United Federation…I'm sure that was a factor in the vid's creation. It's interesting that traditional roles of 'good' and 'bad' were so skewed that it was necessary to make the protagonist an eponym."

"Epi-what?" Wade asks.

"Um. Something's eponymous if it gives its name to something associated with it…I guess the easiest example is the city of Rome, which was named after Romulus. The eponym itself can be either the basis or one of the words based on it—Romulus is the eponym of Rome, Rome is one of the eponyms of Romulus."

And so on, out to the car (the same routine of checking hood, trunk, undercarriage, and seats) and the whole drive to their apartment. Neena walks them up, helps sweep the place (rule three). As she leaves, she dawdles in the doorway.

"So. El Paso said that yesterday you said Nate was your best friend," she hedges in a tone of minor offense.

Wade blinks at her. "Well, yeah. I mean, my best _guy_ friend… And it's not like you really count, anyway, since you're more like a sister. And Temple has a fuckin' big mouth. Hope she grows outta that if the company decides to spring for life extensions, because I ain't puttin' up with her gossip for the next forty years or more."

Neena looks unimpressed. "He doesn't drink, he watches educational holos for _fun_, and he's barely aware of the existence of professional sports. As guy friends go, he's made of considerable amounts of fail."

"Don't say that. You like him."

"Well, _yeah_, but that's because I'm a straight female. I mean, have you _seen_ him? He rocks the nerd thing well, if you're interested in dating him, but it's pretty lame in a guypal. I thought the point of hetero guys making friends with each other was to have somebody to be a Neanderthal with."

It does and doesn't make sense.

Wade shrugs. "He knows cool shit and he lets me ramble. He's only, like, the third person _ever_ to not tell me to shut up every five minutes."

That seems to appease her. She purses her lips. "Okay. But if anybody's got the title of your BFF, it's totally me. I earned my Twinkies, dammit."

**.End.**


	4. Edge of the Unknown

started writing this one before **Starry-Eyed**, but finished it after. i've got two more snippets that are set between them, around the time when Nate and Wade meet.

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. movie geekery. bromance-with-a-chick. language: pg-13 (primetime tv plus s***, f***, and g**damn).

**pairing:** the end of Wade/Nessa and some uncharitable mention of unrequited Nate/Wade.

**timeline:** let's call it...2520-something. Wade's probably around 63, but would have been receiving life extensions (not as thorough as the ones the Network uses, but enough to have him looking thirty-mumble the whole time).

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) title comes from Linkin Park's "Iridescent." 2) these are actual symptoms of pancreatic cancer. the odds in our world are different, though, and a lot less exact. 3) "artiforg" = "artificial organ." i'm not the first person to abbreviate the phrase that way, and i'm sure i won't be the last. 4) Wade and Nate have a nice apartment in Century City, Vanessa and Elektra live in a townhouse in East Beverly Hills, and Neena and Inez have a condo in Granville Towers. 5) a few years into an intimate relationship is a strange time to get embarrassed about not looking your best, but so many women still do it. 6) yakisoba is a dish of fried buckwheat noodles. 7) meter-boosting is the practice of fraudulently increasing taxi fares, either by taking longer routes or by setting the meter to a higher rate (such as suburban instead of metropolitan). ten minutes in the area around Granville Towers is probably about two miles, so an extra half-mile is a pretty big deal. 8) "hep" here is short for "hepatitis," the viral forms of which can lead to liver cancer or liver failure and are transmitted either fecal-orally (A and E), through bodily fluids (B), or through the blood (C), leading to a stigma that hep sufferers are into drugs, promiscuity, or sexual deviance (hence Wade's "ew, no"). 9) Zombieland Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things. Zombieland Rule 29: The Buddy System. Zombieland Rule 8: Get a Kick Ass Partner. 10) "QP" in this case is short for "Quantum Physics." 11) "R&D" = "Research & Development." 12) "UF" = "United Federation," the major government superpower mentioned in **Starry-Eyed**. 13) Mr. Binky is a fixture in the Fateverse; he's usually Sandi's cat. Greebo is the name of Nanny Ogg's vicious old tomcat in the Discworld novels. 14) "carpe some lap" is a reference to the Latin phrase "carpe diem," which means "seize the day." 15) "por favor" is Spanish for "please." 16) "SF" = "Special Forces."

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>Edge of the Unknown<strong>

Wade stares at his reflection, trying to imagine the changes that are coming.

_You're going to lose a lot of weight._

Already lost weight. That's part of why he got checked out. He got used to the scarecrow thing back in junior high, he can get used to it again.

_The abdominal pain's going to get worse._

He can deal with pain.

_The appearance of jaundice will increase._

Turning yellow. Right. Okay. No big deal, changing colors a little… Not like his friends will suddenly go 'oh-em-gee, you're yellow, I just can't deal with that' and run the other way.

_You're going to keep experiencing flu-like symptoms…for at least as long as it takes to replace your pancreas, and probably afterward._

Ah, crap. A month of aching, fatigue, and shitty appetite.

_Unfortunately, it's almost guaranteed that the cancer has spread by now, and we may not know where or how far until you show new symptoms._

Shit.

_And, in all honesty, the statistics are pretty negative. In the last five years, the end survival rate of any cancer has risen to just over seventy percent, but that's starting from sex organs. Yes, people can live fairly normal lives for years and years with cancer, but about a third of them eventually die from it. Cancers of the skin, colon, and pancreas have a higher tendency to metastasize…the survival rate for patients who start out with pancreatic cancer is about thirty percent, and that's only with an aggressive organ replacement regimen. If your strain is resistant, or if it's fast-spreading…we may only be able to buy you time._

One in three. Well, a little less. That's not stellar.

_With a lot of work and some experimental treatments, you could have another twenty years. Better than the six-to-ten months a lot of cancer patients used to have._

His life as he knows it is over. His job, his hobbies, his admittedly weird social life… His diet's gonna have to change, and his exercise regimen—especially once he's got his first artiforg. There's gonna be meds. Lots of meds. Meds to prevent organ rejection, meds to try to kill the cancer before it can spread too far, meds to fight infection (since his immune system will be tanked by the cancer drugs), meds to aid digestion (since the antibiotics will throw his intestinal flora out of whack). More meds if he replaces more organs (meds to counteract heart strain, nutritional imbalance, seizures).

The girls don't need to be dragged through that, especially Nessa.

Better to break up at her place; less likely to throw her own shit than his.

So he splashes water on his face, towels off, sets out.

Nessa and Lektra have a townhouse in the East Hills. It's a nice day, and Century's close enough to walk while he still can.

Warm, bright. No acid rain this week, smog count's low, traffic's good. Funny how that kinda shit was just a matter of 'is it gonna be ten minutes or an hour to cross town for this job' before he got sick.

The windows are open, and the curtains are moving slowly in the breeze. He can smell baked chicken.

He rings the bell and waits on the step.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Nessa calls from somewhere near the kitchen. She answers the door in cutoff sweats and a stained tank top.

"Hey, Ness, we need to—"

She shuts the door in his face.

"—talk," he finishes lamely.

When she comes back, she's got on yoga pants and a hoodie. "Jesus, Wade, can't you _call_ first?"

He blinks at her. "Nessa, I've seen you naked. I've rubbed your PMS-swollen ankles when you haven't shaved for a month. Bra-less bachelorette wear isn't gonna faze me. In fact, it's probably better that you're totally comfortable for this conversation, because you'd just get depressed if you were all prettied-up."

She frowns at him fiercely, eyebrows drawing into a deeply suspicious little knot. "Oh? Exactly what conversation are we having, Wade?"

Moment of truth. Big breath. "I think we should see other people."

"You think we should see other people."

"Yeah, and not because either one of us has any particularly huge malfunctions, relatively speaking. I just feel like I'm married to our work and you deserve a guy who'll spend more time on you. And let's face it, Nessa, we haven't been on a real date in three weeks, haven't had sex for two—"

"Ten days," she corrects. "Ten days is not two weeks, Wade. And I can deal with whatever amount of sex you can fit in your schedule, just so you know—that's why I've got my Bob."

"Your who?" he says, slightly lost.

"Bob. Bee-oh-bee, _battery operated boyfriend_. A vibrator, for Chrissakes."

Wade flails for a moment. "Okay, yes, I get it now, you can stop. If we were gonna stay together, I might ask you to keep going, but we're not, so just _please stop_."

She cocks a hip and folds her arms over her chest. "This is bullshit. I deserve a guy who'll send more time on me? How about a guy who's okay with the fact that I kill people for money? Maybe you haven't noticed, but those are actually kinda hard to find."

"Look, Nessa…I just think we worked better together when we were just, y'know…_working_ together."

Even royally pissed, she's gorgeous. Upper lip curled just shy of a snarl, lower lip hitched up and trembling because she doesn't wanna cry. She slaps him across the face.

The slap is kinda humiliating.

He figures she needs it.

It's for the best, anyway.

"Fuck you," she says. "Go run off to your pet doctor and get drunk like a pair of fucking frat boys. Buy him enough drinks and he'll probably suck your dick."

And then she slams the door again.

"Low fucking blow, Nessa!" he yells at the closed door.

Yeah, Nate totally wants to fuck him. But he's not gay, and Nate knows that, so they're completely cool with Nate keeping his hands in polite places and Wade not getting all weird and homophobic.

Nate was nice enough to run Wade's tests for free.

So now Wade's dying of cancer, his ex-girlfriend is a bitch, and he's in a lousy mood.

He digs out his phone and hits the second number on speed dial.

It rings twice.

_~"What's hoppin', crack-bunny?"~_ Neena says with her mouth full of what sounds like chips. Pork rinds, maybe?

"So I just broke up with Nessa."

_~"For serious? That's major. You must be sicker than we thought."~_

Wade winces. "About that…maybe we could sit down with some yakisoba and a beer and I'll tell you all about it."

_~"Sure thing, Wade. You at the harpy den?"~_

He grins at her name for Nessa's place—it's no secret that Neena and Nessa barely get along. "Yeah. I can be at your condo in ten, if the cabby's decent."

_~"Then I'll seeya in ten."~_

Fucking cabbie goes all the way up to Sunset and loops around. Meter-boosting prick. Wade pays him what it should've cost and walks off to the sound of irate swearing.

"Lose a lucky foot?" Neena drawls.

"Fucker boosted half a damn mile," Wade mutters.

"Nevermind. Our table's probably ready by now."

He waits until they're sitting at Sansai waiting for their food. "I _am_ sicker than we thought."

Neena almost spits her beer. After an awkward moment of gulping and wiping her mouth, she gestures for him to go on. "Okay, so it's…worse than the flu. How worse? Scale of one to ten, one being you'll get over it with a month off and ten being you're gonna die in six months."

"Whatever number is 'you're never going to get better, but you might live for a good while.' That, all the way to ten. That whole range."

She sits back. "Jesus, Wade. Did you tell Vanessa when you broke up with her?"

"No, that was the point—I didn't want her saddled with a dying boyfriend."

"W—did you…" Neena leans forward again. "Did you at least tell Nathan?"

"Didn't have to, he's the one who told me."

She nods and sips her beer for a while. "So…what is it, exactly? AIDS? Hep?"

"What? Ew. No. Pancreatic cancer. I'm looking at around one in three for ending up cancer-free, but that'll mean a lot of replaced organs. Two in three chance it'll spread to something we can't replace and I'll die, anywhere from five to twenty years from now. And I won't exactly be up to working for most of that."

"No, yeah, of course. Jesus. Are you—have you—what's your savings looking like?"

"Assuming I'll be replacing pretty much everything that can be replaced, I can handle food and rent for about a decade. Nate said he wasn't gonna let me pay my half of the rent, but fuck that, right? I mean, I'm not his girlfriend."

"Come on, he cares about you. He wants to take care of you while you're sick."

The food arrives, and they eat in silence for a little bit.

"Are you gonna tell anybody else?" Neena asks after a while. "Can I tell Temple and Masters? Or would that be tacky and gossipy?"

"I think I'm gonna keep it under wraps until I've got a new pancreas and we have some idea of what's gonna go next."

"Maybe you should get it all replaced at once. Think they give a bulk rate?"

"Neena!"

She shrugs sheepishly.

He shoves his noodles around his plate. "You know they won't replace more than one at a time unless it's an emergency. Something about strain to the cardiovascular system. It'll be years to replace everything with artiforgs."

"Thanks for picking me," she says. "To tell, I mean."

Wade gives her a look. "Uh, _duh_. I've known you twenty years longer than I've known Nate. C'mon, Anaheim, you're like my sister. My weird, wacky, no-taste-in-men sister."

"Laugh it up, Loomis."

"Ha ha ha ha haaaa," he says pointedly. "Beating up all the jocks who picked on me in high school doesn't negate the string of pansy-ass boyfriends."

After a slightly awkward silence, Neena jerks her chin toward Wade's plate. "How's your food?"

"It's good," he says, suddenly feeling trapped and tired and a little scared.

She nods. "Good. Rule thirty-two."

He holds out his fist. "Rule twenty-nine."

Neena grins and contributes her half of the fistbump. "I keep telling you, dude, it's _eight_."

They finish up, pay, and head back to Neena and Temple's place. It feels like old times, walking down the sidewalk after school.

"Jesus, Wade," Neena huffs, hands in her pockets. "If you can't work, what the hell are you gonna do with all your free time? You'll drive Nathan _nuts_."

He shrugs. "Couple years back, I caught the end of one of Nate's study vids. It was about something called 'unified field theory,' and Nate said it was gonna be the key to turning our short-range time travel into potential interdimensional travel. Well, it just seemed real cool and Star-Trekkish, so maybe I'll go through the box of materials from his QP thesis. Hell, maybe I'll do some college-type stuff myself."

"You? With a degree in _physics_? That's some straight-up Twilight Zone shit there, Wade."

Yeah. But he remembers high school math. He remembers being in pre-calc and wondering why everybody else seemed to think it was hard. He remembers being annoyed that he had to write down his work when he could do it in his head.

He remembers correcting Nate's notes more than once.

"My deluxe re-mastered anniversary edition Zombieland holocube says I live long enough to be a doctor of physics," he challenges.

"You're on! If you get that shiny piece of paper, I'll pony up my Firefly cube."

"Sweet! I'm definitely living for that."

Neena shakes his hand, then subjects him to a one-armed, two-pat man-hug. "Who knows? If you really do win that cube off me, Nathan might recruit you into R&D and have me 'n Temple for his live-in security, and then we can all wreak our special brand of havoc on the UF's top defense contractor." And up the steps she goes, into the Granville.

When he gets home, Nate's waiting (must've come home for lunch or something…or maybe took an early day because he was worried about how Wade would take the news). The big mook better have let Temple drive him, because if Wade finds out he traveled from work to home unescorted, there's gonna be a fight.

Mr. Binky tries very hard to trip Wade by ducking between his ankles as he walks.

"Stop that, Mr. B," Nate scolds. "Wade, can I get you anything? Cocoa? Beer?"

Wade plops down on the couch (at which point Mr. Binky loses interest, but Greebo takes the opportunity to carpe some lap). "Set me up with all the study vids for your physics thesis. And then send Temple out to get me a Slurpee."

"You…want my quantum physics cubes?" Nate asks, sounding confused.

Wade eyes him. "You thought I was gonna just sit here and stare at the walls while I waste away? Last time I checked, my pancreas was pretty far away from my brain. I got a bet going with Neena—if I can get a doctorate in physics before I die, she has to fork over her Firefly cube. So. Physics and a Slurpee, por favor. And make a note somewhere that I gotta talk to Jen from legal about getting my will written out when I give my notice tomorrow."

"She actually bet you would _die_ before finishing a physics degree?" Nate says with an upset little frown twisting his eyebrows together.

"Uh-huh. If I kick it without a doctorate, she gets Zombieland. Otherwise, I'm leaving it to Omaha."

Nate reverts to utter confusion. "The city?"

"Tony Masters," Wade explains impatiently. "Buddy from our SF days. If you ever actually _watched_ Zombieland with me, you'd get it. Now, _physics and Slurpee_, Goddammit, or I'll declare you the meanest, most neglectful roommate ever."

Something sad and sweet takes over Nate's face then, reminding Wade uncomfortably of the way his mother used to look at him when _she_ was dying of cancer. "Let's watch it tonight, then. We can watch all the vids I always put off. Serenity. Babylon Five. Equilibrium."

Wade narrows his gaze, holds up his left pinky. "Pinky promise?"

"Pinky promise," Nate says, hooking fingers. And then Nate gets up and calls Temple.

"Hm," Wade says to Greebo. "I could get used to this dyin' thing."

**.End.**


	5. No Words

this was actually scrapped several times before i decided it had something i really wanted to convey but was constantly cutting out of the "modern" Savant stuff; how does such a perceptive and intuitive person completely miss the fact that his roommate/best friend is in love with him? well, he doesn't. this is kind of an explicit spelling-out of the hinted petulant sentiment behind the moment in One Spark (lex-munro. livejournal. com/22447. html) when Wade says "why?" and Nate says "you know why," but Wade says "I don't."

i think the majority of the guilt associated with death comes from what we never said and what we never heard, so this is kind of an expression of where Wade's simmering low-grade constant anger started. that kind of cool-as-a-cucumber attitude when he works comes from this feeling that the worst has already happened, and nothing can be as hard or as painful as the way he mishandled his friendship with Nate.

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. guys-are-dumb. Diet Angst™. language: pg (primetime tv).

**pairing:** unrequited Nate/Wade.

**timeline:** probably starts around 2515, ends 2560.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) "to jump someone's bones" is a euphemism for "to have sex with someone." 2) Neena totally reads trashy romance novels. 3) Battle Bots is a big robotics competition where teams design and build remote-controlled robots, then pit them together in duels to the death. it's violent and enriching at the same time. 4) this is, in fact, what the man-pack is like. if you can stay at the fringes and keep your mouth shut, they generally won't maul you for being different (but i do say this as a fairly big guy who once punched out a defensive lineman for calling my then-boyfriend a "fuckin' fag"). 5) "lotta curve to lurve"...lol, i first heard this in college, when a hockey buddy was talking about why he preferred babes with back. 6) as far as i know, there is no reason for Wil Wheaton. like God and the duck-billed platypus, he simply is, and is awesome. 7) a pipette is a slender tube-shaped device for moving specific amounts of liquid without pouring. they work on the same principles as when you pick up liquid in a straw by covering the end with your fingertip. 8) Leonardo da Vinci was totally gay. 9) Zombieland Rule 32: Enjoy the Little Things. 10) EEG = electroencephalograph, a machine that lets doctors view the electrical impulses in the brain.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>No Words<strong>

So far, Wade's finding that the most awkward part of being a live-in bodyguard for a guy who wants to jump his bones is the way Nate gives zero impression of said bone-jumping urges.

One day, he'd been suggesting an outing to do manly things like get drunk and look at breasts, and Temple had just looked at Wade and said, "You know he's _gay_, right?"

He hadn't. Wade will be the first—well, _one_ of the first—to admit his gaydar could be pretty much nonexistent (he doesn't _think_ he's ever known a gay person, but it's not like people wear little nametags that say "HI, I'M GAY!" in rainbow letters). Still, he liked to think he knew the signs of interest (apparently he didn't, though he's pretty sure he does now). He hadn't seen Nate ogling any of the popular guys at the lab, hadn't seen Nate flirt with _anybody_, hadn't witnessed any celebrity crushing (not even on famous scientists or whatever nerds liked), hadn't found any porn in the apartment that wasn't his…

He'd reached the (perfectly logical, in his opinion) conclusion that Nate was just shy. Or maybe asexual.

Back up a moment.

Okay, yes, Nate being gay doesn't automatically mean he's into Wade like that. Wade just kind of assumed, since he knows he has an awesome ass and a cute smile. Seriously, who could possibly like guys and _not_ be interested in the awesome ass? Hell, he's had _lesbians_ tell him he has a perfect ass. So clearly, by further application of logic, if Nate wants any guy's ass, it's Wade's.

But the guy doesn't _say_ anything. He acts…_normal_ about it.

The second Wade got past a reflexive denial of "he's not gay, he's just shy," he started to mentally prepare himself for what he considered to be an inevitable confession. Someday, they'd be watching TV or eating dinner or something, and Nate would say something out of a romance novel. _Wade_, he'd say, _I can't hide my feelings any more_. Or something. And Wade would sigh a little and shake his head and say, _Sorry, dude, I'm into chicks_, and pat poor Nate on the shoulder. _But we can still be friends_. And Nate would weep with relief that he hadn't spoiled their friendship.

…jeez, Wade really needs to stop borrowing Neena's books…

Plan B was that Wade would delicately ask why Nate hadn't dated any of the hot chicks who threw themselves at him, and maybe Nate would shrug and say, _I'm gay_, and then Wade would nod sagely and say, _Thought so_. And that would be that, and since they are who they are, nothing would change. Back to beer and Battle Bots.

However, 'inevitable' could still mean 'a really long time from now,' and Wade's getting antsy by the third week.

The gay thing is still a mystery to him. How can you tell if a guy's gay? Guys lie about what they like all the time (in public, anyway). The man-pack is a fierce and bloody phenomenon, after all, and even the alpha-dude can be torn to shreds if he says the wrong thing in the wrong way.

Guys who like little perky boobs will lie and say they love 'em huge and fake if that's what everybody else in the man-pack is drooling over. Guys who like girls with a lotta curve to lurve will lie and say they like scrawny little size two supermodel bitches. Guys who like being spanked will lie like hell until they find a pushy girl who likes paddles. For all Wade knows, half the men he's met were gay and lied about it.

Wade's personal experience with the subject of sexuality is that he likes looking at pretty women. If you asked him to define 'pretty,' he'd be stuck, because he never really knows until he sees it. He figures that _if_ Nate's really gay, that has to be what it's like—he likes looking at hot guys, for some reason that either doesn't exist or just can't be consciously understood (like God, or platypi, or Wil Wheaton…they still haven't found a reason for Wil Wheaton, right?). No accounting for taste…or whatever.

But Wade knows that when _he's_ attracted, he isn't great at hiding it, and while most guys he knows can pretend to be interested when they're not, they all suck at pretending not to be interested when they _are_. So _if_ Nate's gay, he must surely appreciate Wade's awesome ass, and therefore it will have to be very obvious at some point.

One day, Wade just can't take it anymore. He means to say, _So you totally want me, right?_ What comes out is, "So have you ever been on a date?" He tries to recover by adding, "I mean, I haven't seen you talking with anybody, really, at all," which is a little mean and a lot awkward.

To his credit, Nate doesn't spill anything (which is good, since Wade is pretty sure the stuff in the test tube has the potential to go boom). He just pauses, lifts the pipette out of the test tube, and blinks at Wade. "I'm…touched by your concern?" Nate says, sounding a little confused. Wade can't really blame him for the confused part—Wade's confused, too. "I'm not lonely, if that's what's got you worried."

"So then when are you stuffing all these guys, that you're not lonely but I haven't seen you hanging out with anybody?" Wade would like to punch himself, but the words have already escaped. Spilt milk, and all that.

Nate slips the test tube and pipette into their respective racks and turns to face Wade properly. "I didn't say I was 'stuffing' people," he points out sharply. "I don't appreciate the crude phrasing or the implication that sex cures loneliness, but I'll forgive it since you're obviously distraught. I simply said I'm not lonely. And I'm not."

"You don't date, but you're not lonely, so are you digging this celibacy thing or have you just not found anybody who's your type? Are you saving yourself? Waiting for true love or something?" Wade grimaces. He started the conversation by sticking his foot in his mouth, and he's pretty sure he's worked his way up to the hip by now.

"There's someone," Nate says. "Someone amazing and intelligent and oblivious and perfectly imperfect, and I'm absolutely in love with him. But sex makes things needlessly complicated, and I don't think a romantic relationship with him would be at all viable. I have plenty of friends, and I can see him any time I like, so I'm not lonely. Meanwhile, the world of science doesn't wait for such a silly thing as the pining heart of a single gay Renaissance man—it didn't for da Vinci, and it won't for me." And then he turns back to his work with a firm and final air.

Wade wants to tear his hair out. Nate admitted to nothing, and has shut the conversation down. Yeah, the gay thing was on the money, but he could be talking about _anybody_. Wade's pretty sure Nate meant _him_, but Nate didn't say _I'm in love with you_, so that's really just hopeful conjecture, and it doesn't mean anything if Nate doesn't just _say it_, and Wade has no idea why he cares except that even Nessa has never used the L-word seriously with him and Wade wants _so much_ for someone to be in love with him, but that's kinda weird since Nate's a guy and Wade is very straight but it ain't like he's a homophobe it's just a fundamental incompatibility and his stupid brain is goingincirclesargh.

He jumps when a cup of coffee appears under his nose.

"Situational awareness fail," Neena declares.

He nearly accuses Nate of breaking his brain. "I was thinking," he says instead.

"Oh, _that's_ what the smoke was about. For a minute, I thought Nate spilled some acid or something."

From that point on, it becomes something of a game—Wade is determined to get Nate to admit that _Wade_ is the mysterious guy he's in love with, but without resorting to dickish moves like torture, interrogation, or stripping naked and uttering lame pickup lines.

It's a weird game, but it's kind of fun (and Nessa will never, never, never say the L-word and mean it the way Nate did that one time). And then Wade gets sick, and Nate stops pretending he isn't smiling like a dork at the little things (rule thirty-two), and he still won't say it. And then Nate starts killing himself to save Wade, and he still won't say it.

In the end, trapped in his fragile, dying body, Wade pulls up the EEG scan and waits for the spike of recognition.

Nate stares at the crippled chrononeurologist in the hoverchair (not in a rude way, but not in a sweet and heartbreaking _I'm absolutely in love with you_ way). If it weren't for the fact that Nate doesn't remember how to string words together (hasn't for two round-trips), Wade might expect him to say _Don't I know you?_

The game is over. Wade has lost.

**.End.**


	6. Recruits

a strange combination of several scenes that happened at different times. i wanted to bridge the gap between disheartened to determined, and i wanted to show how Wade got his fifth Demolition Girl.

**warnings:** AU - Fateverse. sci-fi. the Greater Good™. Diet Angst™. language: pg-13 (for bulls*** and g**damn).

**pairing:** defunct Nate/Wade bromance.

**timeline:** 2560-ish.

**disclaimer:** recognizable characters and terms belong to respective owners. i just made the AU.

**notes:** 1) i've noticed that several people of genius-level intelligence don't see themselves as smart-they see everyone else as stupid. 2) "fab" in this case is short for "fabricate," as in "genetic fabrication facility," where the Network grows new bodies at incredible expense. 3) delta, omega, gamma, and psi are Greek letters frequently used as variables in math and physics; specifically, these are the variables you would use for quantum physics equations. 4) "Netcon" = "Network Concordat." 5) "Sysadmin" = "System Administrator." 6) Charon is the name of Hayden's private military group; it's also the name of the ferryman who brought souls across the River Styx. 7) "DOD" = "Department of Defense." 8) the UF has a Chancellor instead of a President. 9) "SecDef" = "the Secretary of Defense." the three major heads of the US armed forces are abbreviated in similar fashion (but in all-caps, if you want to be nitpicky), as "SecNav," "SecArmy," and "SecAF"; these abbreviations are used like proper names (e.g. "I've got SecNav on the phone for you, sir."). i imagine the UF would have carried these terms over for the sake of convenience. 10) "demos" here is short for "demographics," specific groups of people as defined by factors such as age, sex, income, occupation, sexuality, etc.

visit The Fateverse Glossary (lex-munro. livejournal. com/64465. html) for terms, concepts, Nodes, and important people.

* * *

><p><strong>Recruits<strong>

"You're brilliant, you know."

Wade's heard it a million times since he started studying physics.

You're brilliant, you're brilliant.

Bullshit. He's not brilliant—everybody else is _stupid_. It's the only explanation, since universalized resonance theory just _makes sense_, and everything else in chronogeometry follows from there.

Wade shrugs as he writes out a quantum entanglement calculation on the surface of the table. In his old body, he didn't have to write out most of his calculations. This brain isn't broken in as well, doesn't have the right connections. It remembers how to play five musical instruments, how to butcher a human body for consumption by hogs, eight ways to compromise physical evidence, how to hotwire a car with a screwdriver. Oddly, his handwriting is unchanged.

The other guy patiently sits across the table, hands folded. "It's why the Network Concordat finally gave in to the Sysadmin on the point of erase-first brainslides. It was rough finding a useable iteration. Maybe in the future we'll just fab a new body for you. It wouldn't be cheap, but we can do it if we need to, and it would be worth it, because you're brilliant. Your mind—the way it works—is a one-in-billions precious resource."

He finishes a simplification before he looks up.

Their visitor this time isn't some well-meaning Mr. Popularity like the Cartographer; he's a nerd, a programmer-tinkerer-whatever with huge glasses and a level of scruff that suggests he's been trying unsuccessfully to grow a beard for about a month.

Wade starts to sketch a map of known proximal leylines. Curves on a spray of dots. "I figured AskaniCorp didn't make me one of their senior chrononeurologists for nothing. I'm head of experimental chronometric physics, too."

"We—the Network, I mean—have been working with advanced chronometric physics for almost eight hundred years now, and our most skilled Theorists can barely follow your work. You've reconciled quantum mechanics with the demonstrable properties of the unified field _and_ vibrational string matter in less time than it takes most of our scientists to complete their preliminary studies."

"It just makes sense," Wade huffs, going over the numbers from yesterday's chronometric scan in his head and doodling out the trendlines over his leyline sketch. "You just have to know the right math, that's all. And you have to realize that the math most people use for physics is one huge special case. What's the point of you sitting there telling me I'm brilliant?"

What's the point of _anything_? His best friend is a seven-foot-tall vegetable because he was stupid and stubborn and wouldn't just _wait_ even though Wade _knew_ that if they just held out a few years, the Network would give them the green light anyway. Nate never listened when Wade said he just _knew_ things; he listened when Wade had seen it in a movie or read it in a book, he listened when Wade had heard it from some guy at the coffee shop, but never if he just _knew_ it.

He starts a sequence extrapolation, works through the numbers with feverish intensity. He bends close over the grey lines, until his vision is full of deltas and omegas, with a gamma here and a psi there. Just shapes, from this close. Curls and points. The abstract appearance of everything calms him a little.

"I want you to understand why the Netcon wants you to be a Theorist."

"I understand. They'll want me to move to the Core, they'll offer all the best facilities and all the assistants I could want. But all I need is my brain, a pencil, and a chronometric scanner. And my friends. So I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm sure you aren't planning on it. But the Sysadmin doesn't want you to be a Theorist."

He snorts. "Republican prez with a democratic Congress?"

"Not exactly. He sees something the Netcon doesn't. Tell me, Wade—"

"Dr. Wilson," he corrects. "I got my Ph.D. in chronogeometry six years ago—Masters thesis on gravitic induction of quantum tunnels, Doctoral thesis on the effects of quantum entanglement on branch absorption."

"Tell me…what would happen if someone killed the head of AskaniCorp today?"

Wade puts his pencil down. "That a threat?" "Pure conjecture. A hypothetical."

Wade thinks. "Today. It'd be public, so there would be a drop in stock stability, a loss of confidence in AskaniCorp's security measures. Even if we caught the guy, we'd be screwed for at least two months. Marx would probably become the new CEO, he'd make a show of hiring out our security to a separate firm. I'd advise Charon, he'd listen. The place would lock down like a fortress, but the DOD would already have canceled half their contracts for security reasons. Private investments would stabilize, as long as AskaniCorp still had the public backing of the Network. I give it six months before stocks fully recover, two years before the DOD gives us new contracts."

"That's very precise, Wade."

Irritated, Wade flicks his pencil so that it goes flying across the table.

The visitor casually leans to the side and lets the sharpened wood pass by without hitting him. "Victoria Hand is the name of the current Secretary of State, yes?"

"Yes."

"How would you go about turning her into the Chancellor of the United Federation?"

"First you'd have to kill the current one. Then you'd have to get SecDef out of the way, probably by character assassination. After a vote of no confidence in his position as Vice-Chancellor, she'd be Acting Chancellor until the next voting cycle, but she'd have to be voted in properly to get most of the powers of office. Key demos that would vote for her are single moms, lesbians, territorial rights campaigners, civil liberties groups, teachers… She'd have to go public with whoever her latest girlfriend is, show off the stability of her home life. Probably campaign for mutant welfare. Look, whatever-your-name-was—"

"Dr. Hammer, Programmer 001. Call me Weasel—all the Wades I've ever met have. Have a look at this, Wade." And he slides a piece of paper over.

There are two columns of writing.

Stocks tank 2mo+. DOD cancels ½ contracts. New CEO Marx. New security Charon. w/ Network backing, 6mo to stock recovery, 2yr to new DOD contracts.

Assassinate Chancellor. Publicly discredit SecDef, vote of no confidence. Hook single mothers, lesbians, teachers w/ stable public relationship. Hook territorial rights and civil liberties w/ campaign plan focused on mutant social welfare programs.

Wade snorts. "You don't really think you can impress me with that, do you? So you knew what I was going to say…so what? We're Goddamn time travelers."

"I didn't know what you were going to say," says Weasel. "These are the prevalent chains of events under those hypothetical situations, according to chronometric scanning. You did that without a scanner."

Wade doesn't just believe Weasel—he _knows_ that Weasel is telling the truth, the same way he _knew_ how the scenarios would play out.

"It just made sense," Wade manages after a moment. "So. What, I'm a portable scanner?"

"You have nigh-prescient intuition. All your experiments work because you know what's going to happen."

He feels slightly unbalanced. He wishes he still had the pencil, so he could fidget. "Okay."

"The Sysadmin wants you to use that intuition for a very important job as a field agent."

"Very important job," he echoes numbly.

"You know enough about chronogeometry to realize that some branches of the timestream have a widespread effect on the overall stability of the timestream. And you understand that they can become incredibly unstable, and that the easiest way to stabilize many of those branches is by completely destabilizing other branches."

He doesn't like where this is going. "Yes," he says, because he does understand that. "Pruning and absorption, removing some of the vibrational signal-noise."

"The Sysadmin wants you to use your intuition to destabilize specific branches of the timestream as quickly as possible."

Wade swallows thickly. "Okay, you're a Programmer, not a Theorist, so I don't expect you to know this—complete destabilization of a branch would result in collapse. When a timeline collapses, it phase-levels. All matter in it is instantaneously converted into energy. In effect, everything dies in a new Big Bang, and an entirely different universe begins."

"He's told me."

"Then he knows he's asking me to kill billions of—"

"He's asking you to preserve the sentient life forms in over a billion distinct time branches—where each planet capable of supporting life could have populations in the billions or trillions. Reset a few, or the whole thing could reset _itself_."

Wade feels sick. "The needs of the many, huh?"

"You used to be a soldier for hire. You killed people for a living."

"But I never pretended I had the moral high ground while I was doing it," Wade growls.

Weasel folds his hands together. "If you don't do it, we'll get somebody else who won't be as good at it. All our calculations are aimed at the highest prolonged overall stability—the highest number of lives preserved. And the faster a timeline is demolished, the less chance there is of something else destabilizing. More than that, Wade…it has to be someone who's suffered. It has to be you, because of the way you lost your body, and the way you lost your friend. If it's necessary for a good man to die, he should be killed by someone who knows how important one person can be to another, someone who acknowledges the value of what he's destroying, so that it never gets taken for granted."

"Oh," Wade says.

Oh.

Slowly, Weasel takes his glasses off, polishes the lenses on his labcoat, puts them back on. "We could get someone else, Wade, but I doubt we'd find anyone who truly understands like you do."

"Whole _timelines_," he breathes, slightly overwhelmed. "Where would I even—I couldn't do it by myself, even if we used brainslides to get me into native bodies. I'd need a team. Four—maybe five people? _Capable_ people. _Dangerous_ people. Anaheim, El Paso, Nessa…"

Weasel slides over another piece of paper.

Neena Thurman. Inez Temple. Vanessa Carlysle. Elektra Natchios. Theresa Cassidy.

"Who's—"

"You'll see," says Weasel.

"And you're _sure_ it's gotta be me?"

"When is it right to kill a child?"

"Never," Wade answers reflexively.

"Even to save whole timelines?"

Wade glares at Weasel. "_Necessary_ and _right_ are two different things. A guy hits the point where he has to steal the medicine his baby needs to survive, that doesn't make stealing right. Just necessary."

Weasel smiles faintly. "Yeah," he says. "I'm sure it's gotta be you." He pulls a black glass sphere out of his pocket and sets it on the table between the two pieces of paper. "This is Ragnarok—you're its Keeper now. It can give you any information you need on how to use it. You've got a week to put together your team, and then we'll send you on your first assignment."

When Weasel has left, Wade sets Neena to work finding Theresa Cassidy. By the next day, he's sitting across a table from her. She's very pretty, he notes absently. All five of his girls are very pretty. They're like a hooker catalog—blonde, brunette, redhead; tomboy and girly-girl; long-walks-on-the-beach and taking-apart-a-V10. Everything a guy could want (unless you're into little people, but if Nessa can do furries and big strapping men, she can probably do midgets).

He snorts to himself. At least the scenery will be nice while he's off destroying whole worlds.

"So, I heard this was…a job interview, of sorts?" the redhead says uncertainly. Irish accent. Very cute.

"'M I making you nervous?" Wade asks.

"Not you, sir. Interviews always make me nervous."

"You know who I am?"

"Dr. Wilson, aye? One of the ones who's been working with the Network. The Savior's best friend."

Even though she meant it neutrally (maybe even as a compliment), it stings. He hides his flinch well (he thinks). "Yup. What are your feelings on assassination?"

She frowns. "Isn't that sort of thing in my work history, sir? Political assassination's one o' my specialties."

"Didn't ask what you do. Asked what your feelings are."

"There's an up-side and a down-side to killing anyone, really. Sometimes, it's just what needs to be done. I s'pose I don't let myself think much on it, because I'm careful about choosing my employers."

Wade flips through her file. Nessa said she's one of Charon's best. "You'll do," he decides. "As of today, you're a member of the Fidelis Network's Timeline Demolition Squad. Over the next three days, you're getting a crash course in things like chronometric entropy and time paradoxes. Then we all leave on our first assignment."

"Leave?" she echoes.

"For a different branch of the timestream," he clarifies. "Another universe."

And her emerald eyes twinkle, and she looks like a little kid at Christmas. If the other four take it this well, maybe the job won't be so rough after all.

**.End.**


End file.
